Scars on Middle East landscape bear witness to past peace failures

Talk of Middle East peace is in the air again, as politicians are set to gather in Bahrain to launch the latest in a long line of initiatives to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Thousands of words and millions of dollars will likely be expended at the U.S.-led conference on June 25-26 aimed at boosting the Palestinian economy, as the first phase of President Donald Trump's long-delayed peace plan gets under way.

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

An abandoned mosque in the Golan Heights, in territory that Israel captured from Syria and occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. Until 1967 a Syrian village inhabited by Circassians stood near the site, which now lies just 5km on the Israeli side of the United Nations-monitored 'Area of Separation' that divides Israeli and Syrian military forces under a 1974 ceasefire arrangement.

Bearing witness to the difficulty of the task are the scars left by wars past across the landscape of Israel, the Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights.

Ancient ruins and medieval castles bear witness to the fact that conflict between the peoples of the Levant is nothing new.

Since the end of British Mandate rule and the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, invasions, wars, armistices, treaties, uprisings, barriers, checkpoints and civil wars have shifted the boundaries of who can travel - and live - where.

Yet on the ground there remain fragments of who came and went before.

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

A Syrian tank.

In the far north, on the western edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a decades-old rusting Syrian tank can still be seen lying upside down in a whitewater stream.

It lies in what used to be a demilitarised zone that separated the Syrian and Israeli armies from 1949 until the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel captured most of the mountainous plateau from Syria, occupying and later annexing it.

Today, Israeli tourists carve graffiti into the metal of the tank while dangling their feet in the foaming water below.

"It’s surrealistic," said Daniel Alonim, 54, as his friends played Scrabble atop the hulk. "Like it fell from space."

It did fall, but not from space.

Amiram Efrati, from nearby Kibbutz Dan, fought in a June 1967 battle against half a dozen Syrian tanks that had advanced on Israeli positions from the then Syrian-held Golan. One of the tanks opened fire in a dry wheat field, he recalls.

"The fire caught up to the tank tracks and metal chains and they started to retreat," said Efrati, now 82. "One of the tanks went too close to the edge, it was too heavy for that kind of terrain and it fell down. It's still there."

Fifty-two years later he has little confidence that peace efforts will succeed. "I don't believe it, not in the Middle East."

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

The wall of a structure in a former Syrian outpost is covered in graffiti. One Arabic message readd: 'The Syrian army passed by here.”

Across the Golan are other reminders of the 1967 and 1973 wars between Israel and Syria: minefields, foxholes and abandoned armour. One former Syrian building bears Arabic graffiti reading "The Syrian army passed by here".

It is not the only army to have passed through.

The British army arrived in 1917 and left in 1948, when British rule ended. As they departed, neighbouring Arab countries invaded, and Jordanian forces captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

An armistice a year later created the "Green Line" that separated Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem from the Jordanian-held east of the city for nearly two decades from 1949 until the 1967 war, when Israel captured East Jerusalem.

There is now almost no visible sign of the "Green Line" in the middle of the city.

5 Mar 2019. Jerusalem. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

Part of a trench in a former Jordanian military post known as Ammunition Hill. Originally built by the British, the site was captured by Jordan in the 1948-1949 war and held by them until Israeli troops captured it in the 1967 Six Day War.

But on Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill, a memorial preserves the old Jordanian trenches and fortifications, on a site originally built by the British.

Buildings constructed during the British Mandate era to serve as jails and fortified positions are seen in Al-Jiftlik village near Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Other relics of the British era survive. In the West Bank, a British jail and military buildings still stand in Al-Jiftlik, near Jericho. Long abandoned, sheep now wander through the empty buildings. The Israeli military sometimes uses it for training, Palestinian residents say.

Also Gaza, a tiny Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coast, is filled with relics of the recent and distant past.

In Gaza War Cemetery lie 3,217 Commonwealth burials from World War One, and more than 200 from the World War Two.

In the post-war era Gaza remained a frequent flashpoint - until the Oslo peace process of the 1990s brought hopes of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Remains of Gaza International Airport. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton attended the opening ceremony in 1998. But Israeli air strikes and bulldozers closed it down during the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Huge amounts of money were spent creating the institutions of the Palestinian Authority under its first president, Yasser Arafat, who used Gaza's airport to fly abroad on official visits.

But the optimism of the Oslo era receded, giving way to mutual recriminations and renewed violence.

The airport was an early casualty: Israel destroyed its runway a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, deeming it a security threat during a Palestinian uprising in Gaza and the West Bank.

Story

Arafat’s helicopter – the presidential transport of a long-dead president – is now a rotorless relic on public display in Gaza City. And the skeletons of the airport buildings lie gutted and abandoned next to Gaza's southern border with Egypt.

Photo Editing by Marika Kochiashvili, Text Editing by William Maclean

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Slideshow

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

An abandoned mosque is seen on a rainy morning in the Golan Heights.

13 Mar 2019. Zikim, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

An Israeli military outpost is seen on Zikim beach in southern Israel, close to the border with the Gaza Strip.

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

A bunker is seen in the Golan Heights.

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

Part of an abandoned Syrian building is seen in the Golan Heights. Once a military headquarters, it is one of many Syrian buildings left deserted and abandoned since wars fought half a century ago.

27 Feb 2019. Golan Heights, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

A sign warning of landmines is seen on a fence in the Golan Heights. Many Israeli and foreign tourists drive past the site on their way to popular holiday spots.

A disused tank lies abandoned in an open area next to an Israeli military training area in the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israel and Jordan fought during the 1967 Six Day War but signed a peace treaty in 1994.

26 Mar 2019. Dead Sea, Palestinian Territories. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

A part of a structure deserted following the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the area from the Jordanians, stands in a former Jordanian military base, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

1 Jun 2019. Jerusalem. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

British soldiers are depicted in a mural on an old pillbox in Jerusalem. The pillbox dating back to the era of British Mandatory rule before 1948, stands abandoned in a busy intersection of Jerusalem. The mural was added in recent years.

3 Jun 2019. Rahat, Israel. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

Concrete blast walls in an open area once used by the Israeli military near Rahat, southern Israel. Once part of a facility for training in urban warfare, the barriers are now an isolated scar on the landscape.

5 Mar 2019. Lifta, ISRAEL. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

A house is seen in Lifta, a ruined Palestinian Arab village whose inhabitants left or were forced from their homes in the conflict that accompanied the end of British rule and the founding of Israel in 1948. The abandoned ruins are visible to travellers arriving at the western entrance of Jerusalem.